Chicago Public Library
Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of
Afro-American History and Literature
Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers, 1847-1997
Biographical Notes: Robert Abbott, John Sengstacke, Myrtle Sengstacke
Organizational Histories: Chicago Defender, NNPA, Sengstacke Enterprises
Scope and Content: Robert Abbott, John Sengstacke, Myrtle Sengstacke
Photographs
Robert Sengstacke Abbott: Super Series
Biography | Manuscripts | Correspondence | Chicago Defender
Booker T. Washington Project | Serials | Clippings | Memorabilia
John Herman Henry Sengstacke: Super Series
Biography and Official Documents | Manuscripts | Correspondence
Family Records | Personal Finance | Legal | Subject Files | Sengstacke Enterprises
Chicago Defender | Other Newspapers | Chicago Defender Charities | Amalgamated Publishers
National Newspaper Publishers Association | Organization Files | Serials | AV | Clippings | Memorabilia
Myrtle Elizabeth Picou Sengstacke: Super Series
Correspondence | Biography, Family Records and Official Documents
Manuscripts, Personal Financial, and Programs | Organizational Files | Clippings
Serials | Memorabilia | Yearbooks
| Search Note: When performing a keyword search (Ctrl+F), remember to search on each of the 5 pages comprising the finding aid. To search the entire document at once, download the PDF version available above. |
| Collection Number: | 2007/06 |
| Provenance: | Donation of Robert A. Sengstacke, May 30, 2007. John Sengstacke inherited the papers of Robert Abbott upon Abbott’s death in 1940. Beginning in the 1940s, he separated many of Abbott’s papers and some of his own papers and housed them in a location apart from the files of the Chicago Defender. After the Defender moved to 2400 South Michigan Avenue, John Sengstacke housed the materials in the building’s “tower,” in space to which only he controlled access. Those separately housed papers, both Abbott’s and John Sengstacke’s, were willed to Robert A. Sengstacke upon John Sengstacke’s death in 1997. The inventory of John Sengstacke’s assets listed these archival materials separately, and the probate judgment awarded them to Robert A. Sengstacke. He inherited the papers of Myrtle Sengstacke separately after her death in 1990. In 2007, Robert A. Sengstacke donated the family papers to the Chicago Public Library. |
| Size: | 179 linear feet (251 archival boxes) |
| Repository: | Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature Carter G. Woodson Regional Library (Chicago Public Library) 9525 S. Halsted St. Chicago, IL 60628 |
| Access: | No restrictions |
| Citation: | When quoting material from this collection the preferred citation is: Abbott-Sengstacke Papers [Box #, Folder #], Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library. |
| Processed by: | Mapping the Stacks Staff: Melissa Barton, Doron Galili, Moira Hinderer, Celeste Day Moore, Traci Parker, Christina Petersen, Marcia Walker. |
| Supervised by: | Michael Flug, Senior Archivist, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, CPL |
Biographical Note:
Robert Sengstacke Abbott (November 28 or 29, 1868-February 29, 1940) was born in Frederica, St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, the second child of Thomas Abbott (?-1869) and Flora Butler Abbott (1847-1932). Thomas Abbott and his family had been owned as slaves by Captain Charles Stevens, who had a plantation on St. Simon’s Island. After Emancipation, Thomas moved to Savannah, Georgia, and met Flora Butler, the daughter of Harriet and Jacob Butler. Thomas and Flora married in 1867. Flora had been born a slave in Savannah; her parents had both been born in West Africa. Whereas Thomas had been taught to read and write by his master, Flora had taught herself to read and write in secret, and attended a clandestine school for slaves. Thomas and Flora returned to St. Simon’s Island and opened a small grocery store. When Thomas died of tuberculosis in 1869, less than a year after Robert’s birth, Flora took her infant son back to Savannah. She was aided in the ensuing custody battle by John Henry Hermann Sengstacke (1848-1904), and the two married July 26, 1874.
Robert’s stepfather, John H. H. Sengstacke, had an unusual family history. His father, Herman Henry Sengstacke, a German sea captain, had immigrated to the United States and was working as a merchant when he attended a slave auction in 1847. Angered by the poor treatment of black women being auctioned as property, he bought and freed a woman named Tama Melrose. The two traveled to South Carolina, where interracial marriage was legal, married, and returned to Savannah. John Herman Henry was born the following year, and Tama died giving birth to a daughter in 1849. Herman Sengstacke took both children back to Germany. In 1869, John Sengstacke returned to the United States to investigate what had become of his father’s estate in Savannah. He eventually received the store that his father had run in a black settlement in Savannah. Sengstacke settled there, and he allowed his new friend Flora Abbott and her infant son to move into a house on the property before they married in 1874. An educated, very light-skinned man who was often mistaken for a white man, Sengstacke was stung by his treatment in racist Georgia, and taught his stepson Robert to hate racial injustice.
John H. H. Sengstacke treated Robert as his own son, though he was baptized as Robert Abbott. John and Flora had seven children: John Jr., Alexander (1875-1934, the father of Chicago Defender publisher John Sengstacke), Mary, Rebecca, Eliza, Susan, and John. In 1876, when Robert was eight years old, John H. H. Sengstacke was ordained as a Congregational minister. The family moved to Woodville, a historically black suburb of Savannah, and pastored Woodville Pilgrim Congregational Church. Angered at the poor educational opportunities available to black residents of Woodville, John began teaching school in addition to his ministry.
Robert Abbott’s interest in printing began when he worked as a printer’s devil at a local newspaper. In 1889, he enrolled in Hampton Institute’s printing trade program, having apprenticed at the Savannah Echo while waiting to matriculate. Abbott finished his printer’s course in 1893 but remained at Hampton, taking his bachelor’s degree in 1896. While at Hampton, Abbott, a concert tenor, sang in the Hampton Quartet. His registration receipts indicate that he was already using the name Robert Sengstacke Abbott during his Hampton years.
After graduating with his second Hampton degree, Abbott became frustrated with race discrimination in the printer’s trade, and in 1898 he decided to study law at Kent College in Chicago (now Chicago-Kent College of Law), earning his L.L.B. in 1899, the only African American in a class of 70 students. Abbott practiced law briefly in Gary, Indiana and Topeka, Kansas before returning to Chicago in 1903.
Again, he found his skin color to be a barrier to his career. Abbott decided to enter the newspaper business, and on May 6, 1905, Abbott began selling a four-page sheet called the Chicago Defender door-to-door in Chicago’s growing African American community. Though Abbott initially rented an office to write and print the paper, financial instability forced him to retreat to his own home, a room he rented from Henrietta Lee at 3159 State Street. Inspired by his cause, Lee offered him the use of the dining room and kitchen. Abbott eventually repaid Lee’s generosity by buying her an eight-room house.
Abbott had been inspired by his stepfather’s teachings, as well as the indignities of Jim Crow across the South, to use his paper as a platform to speak against racial injustice. As his friend and colleague Metz T. P. Lochard would later write, the scourge of lynchings and the 1906 riot in Atlanta “prodded Abbott with their horror.” Abbott highlighted incidents of discrimination and terror, supporting equal opportunities for African Americans in all sectors of American life.
With the Defender’s national readership, Abbott decided to use his newspaper to influence black Southerners to migrate north. Throughout 1917, the Defender published news articles and editorials that promoted the growing “Exodus,” sponsoring its own “Great Northern Drive.” Racial tension grew during World War I, and erupted in the Chicago Riot of 1919, eight days of violence following the drowning of a black teenager who had been swimming in an all-white section of beach on Lake Michigan. Though the Defender initially advocated demonstrations to protest the teen’s death, Abbott would eventually print handbills declaring “This is not time to solve the Race Question.” Abbott was nominated to serve on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations which investigated the causes of the violence. Their report, The Negro in Chicago, was published in 1922.
Abbott fought all segregation, and opposed black nationalism. He was an implacable foe of Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement and Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. In 1923, Abbott joined William Pickens, Chandler Owen, Robert W. Bagnall, and others in pushing the U.S. Attorney General to “vigorously and speedily push the government’s case against Marcus Garvey for using the mails to defraud.” A Republican in the years when nearly all African Americans supported that party, Abbott also declared his anti-Communist beliefs, while using the threat of Communism’s attraction for African Americans as a bargaining chip with powerful whites.
The Defender’s success had made Abbott a millionaire, and on May 28, 1918, he purchased a mansion at 4847 Champlain Avenue. Three months later, nearing 50 years old, he married Helen Thornton Morrison, a widow. The couple traveled to South America in 1923; on his return, Abbott singled out Brazil’s relative racial equality for praise in articles in the Defender. Abbott reported a similar lack of restrictions when he and Helen toured Europe in 1929. Abbott’s marriage to Helen ended in a bitter divorce in 1933. In August 1934, Abbott married Edna Brown Denison, a 43-year-old widow with four grown children.
On November 10th, 1919, Abbott bought a three-story building at 3435-3437 Indiana Avenue and transformed the building into the Defender headquarters. In 1931 he launched Abbott’s Monthly, a magazine. Though successful at first, the Depression hurt sales and the magazine folded in 1933. Abbott meanwhile began to offer financial support to his enormous extended family, including his German cousins. He took a special interest in the son of his brother Alexander, John Herman Henry Sengstacke, III, whose Hampton education he bankrolled. In 1934, Abbott hired him as vice president and treasurer of the Defender, promoting him to general manager the following year.
Abbott served as a board member of the Wabash Avenue YMCA; board member of the Chicago Urban League; a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and national executive president of the Hampton Alumni Association; member of the American Ancient Order of Foresters, the Appomattox Club, and Lincoln Memorial Association; and a 33rd degree Mason. Though raised in the Congregational denomination, in adulthood Abbott joined the Episcopal Church and then the Presbyterian Church. Frustrated with racial discrimination in both, he embraced the Baha’i faith in the last years of his life.
In 1939, an ailing Abbott ceded control of the Defender to his nephew John Sengstacke. He died of Bright’s Disease, an affliction of the kidneys, on February 29, 1940. His body lay in state at his South Parkway mansion, and his funeral services were conducted by Rev. Archibald Carey, Jr. and Rev. Joseph Evans, at Metropolitan Community Church. He is buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago.
Bibliography
Botkin, Joshua. “Chicago Defender.” In The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Second edition. ed. Colin A. Palmer. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. 1205-1220.
Burns, Ben. Nitty Gritty: A White Editor in Black Journalism. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Garland, Phyl. “Journalism.” In The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Second edition. ed. Colin A. Palmer. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. 1205-1220.
Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke and John Herman Henry Sengstacke.” African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Johns, Robert L. “Robert Sengstacke Abbott.” Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 27 Ed. Ashyia N. Henderson. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 1-4.
Lochard, Metz T. P. “Phylon Profile, XII: Robert S. Abbott—‘Race Leader.’” Phylon 8.2 (1947). 124-132.
Ottley, Roi. The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert Abbott. Chicago: Harry Regnery Company, 1955.
Saunders, Doris. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” Dictionary of American Negro Biography. Ed. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.: 1982. 1-2.
Waters, Enoch P. American Diary: A Personal History of the Black Press. Chicago: Path Press, 1987.
Wilson, Clint C. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 9-10.
Wolseley, Roland Edgar. The Black Press, U.S.A. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1971.
John Herman Henry Sengstacke, editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, was born on November 25, 1912 in Savannah, Georgia to Herman Alexander Sengstacke and Rosa Mae Davis. His family background was remarkable. His grandfather and father were German immigrants Herman Sengstacke and John H. H. Sengstacke, and his grandmother was Tama Melrose Sengstacke, a former slave and daughter of West Africans.
Sengstacke was introduced to journalism during his formative years. His father was a clergyman, founder and principal of Sengstacke Academy, and the publisher of the Woodville Times and West End Post. As a young man, Sengstacke was involved in his father’s newspaper business, beginning at the bottom as a printer’s devil and working his up to his father’s assistant. But, according to Sengstacke’s personal accounts, his interest in the printing trade developed most fully under the guidance of his uncle, Robert Abbott, founder of the Defender, who “took charge of [his] education giving it direction that led to [his] association with the Chicago Defender.”
Sengstacke completed his primary and secondary education at Sengstacke Academy and Knox Institute respectively. From there, he attended Brick Junior College in North Carolina. Upon graduating from Brick in 1929, Sengstacke followed in Abbott’s footsteps and entered Hampton Institute, where he majored in business administration and became actively involved in extracurricular activities such as writing and editing the school newspaper, intercollegiate track and football, and the Hampton Quartet. During his summer vacations, he interned at the Defender, where he recalled “learn[ing] the ins and outs of the newspaper business” under his uncle’s tutelage. He also took courses at Mergenthaler Linotype School, the Chicago School of Printing, and Northwestern University to further his studies in journalism. In 1933, he graduated from Hampton and began his postgraduate studies at Ohio State University in Columbus.
In 1934, Sengstacke joined the staff of the Chicago Defender as Abbott’s assistant and as vice president and general manager of Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company. Here, he established the Michigan Chronicle, and contributed numerous editorials to the Chronicle, the Louisville Defender, and the Chicago Defender. As Abbott’s health began to decline in the 1930s, Sengstacke assumed leadership and became increasingly important to the Defender’s growth and development. However, when Abbott finally succumbed to illness in February 1940, a ten-year court battle ensued that threatened his control of the newspaper and the publishing company. The battle pitted Sengstacke against Edna Abbott, Abbott’s widow, and her representatives on the newspaper’s board of directors. Even as the conflict progressed, Sengstacke continued to manage both the Defender and the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company. The Defender never missed publishing an issue – a phenomenon that can be credited to Sengstacke’s leadership and the paper’s staff. Sengstacke eventually gained sole control of the Defender and the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company in 1951.
Once Sengstacke assumed leadership, he embarked on a mission to expand the paper, building the largest black-owned newspaper chain in American history. In the 1940s, Sengstacke organized the Columbus News, St. Louis News, Toledo Press, and Cincinnati News, and in November 1951 he founded the Tri-State Defender, a weekly newspaper serving the tri-state region of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. In 1952, Sengstacke purchased the New York Age. Four years later, he turned the Defender daily (making himself as publisher eligible to become the first black member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors). In 1966, Sengstacke acquired the Pittsburgh Courier when it ran into financial trouble. He reorganized the paper as the New Pittsburgh Courier.
Established in his profession, Sengstacke married Myrtle Elizabeth Picou of New Orleans on July 9, 1939. They had three sons: John Herman Henry Sengstacke Jr. (February 6, 1941 - May 17, 1976); Lewis Willis Sengstacke (November 18, 1950 - June 23, 1982); Robert Abbott Sengstacke (May 29, 1943). Sengstacke and Myrtle remained married for more than thirty years before divorcing in 1974.
One of Sengstacke’s greatest accomplishments was the creation of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) in 1940. This organization would be renamed the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 1956. The NNPA sought to promote the interests of the black press by “securing unity and action in all matters relative to the profession of journalism and the business of publishing,” and to advance the cause of black journalists in particular and African Americans in general. Sengstacke was elected the first president of the NNPA and served several terms as president. He also published Publisher, Editor and Printer, a trade periodical dedicated to fostering cooperation among African American newspapers.
During World War II and the post-war period, Sengstacke became increasingly active in public affairs on national, state and local levels. He served as chairman of the advisory committee on the black press in the Office of War Information, and as secretary of the President’s Committee on Equality of Opportunity and Treatment in the Armed Services. In Chicago he was chairman of the Chicago War Rationing Board No. 2, which was reputed to have been the largest local board in the country. As editor and publisher of the Defender, Sengstacke “gave increasing space to the exploits of Negro soldiers, to bond sales and other patriotic activities and to occasional evidences of victory at home” in the paper. But “at no time did [the Defender] stop thundering away at every hint of discrimination – from discourteous treatment of Negro soldiers of in Red Cross canteens to the diatribes of Southern Congressmen.”
In addition to advocating for the fair and equal treatment of black servicemen, Sengstacke played an integral role in the integration of professional baseball. According to one biographer, he paved the way for Jackie Robinson to break professional baseball’s color barrier and join the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sengstacke also persuaded President Roosevelt to create jobs in skilled and management positions for African Americans in the United States Postal Service.
At the peak of his career, Sengstacke “controlled three major communications enterprises: Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company, which published the Daily Defender and which was the holding company for four publishing firms; Sengstacke Enterprises, which owned stock in all the publishing companies; and the Amalgamated Publishers, which handled national advertising accounts for several black-owned newspapers.” He also served as director and founding member of the Illinois Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago, director of the Golden State Mutual Insurance Company, chairman of the board of Provident Hospital and Training School Association (where he led the drive to renovate the hospital), vice-chairman of the South Side Planning Board, a director of the Urban League, a director of the Wabash Avenue YMCA, president of the Hampton University Alumni Association, and a trustee of Bethune Cookman College. Sengstacke was a member of the Royal Coterie of Snakes, The Rotary Club, Original Forty Club of Illinois, The Chicago Press Club, and the Advisory Board of the Boy Scouts of America, as well as a Mason and an Elk.
Sengstacke traveled to many countries, including trips to China, Russia, Israel, East Africa, and Germany. On May 28, 1997, Sengstacke died at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago after a stroke and pneumonia.
Bibliography
Daniels, George M. “John H. Sengstacke III: America’s Black Press Lord.” Unpublished manuscript, [n.d.].
De Mott, John. Unpublished Biography of John H. Sengstacke, 1992.
Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. African American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Muhammad, Lawrence. “Sengstacke Profile.” [n.d]
Rothe, Anna (ed). “John Herman Henry Sengstacke.” Current Biography: Who’s News and Why, 1949. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1949.
“Sengstacke, a legend, dies after illness at 84.” Michigan Chronicle 4 Jun. 1997, 1A.
Myrtle Elizabeth Picou Sengstacke became well known in Chicago politics and society through her marriage to Chicago Defender publisher John H. Sengstacke. However, she soon created a role for herself in Chicago by fundraising for political campaigns, and as an activist in public television, women’s groups, philanthropic organizations, and black art. She was born Myrtle Lorenza Picou in 1914 to a New Orleans creole family, including her father Thomas W. Picou, mother Mary E. Raggett (or Marie Raguette), uncle Lewis W. Raggett, and brother Maurice (Morris) Picou. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was a child and Myrtle graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1933, and then attended college at the Southwestern School, also in Los Angeles. According to contemporary reports, in 1939 she moved to Chicago, where she met John Sengstacke. Her immersion in black society predated her marriage, as she was “well known in Chicago and eastern cities” (Defender, January 29, 1938) and a fixture at social events and parties in Los Angeles and New Orleans. They married in July 1939 in Valparaiso, Indiana and had three children together: John Herman Henry Sengstacke III (1941-1976), Lewis Willis Sengstacke (1950-1982), and Robert Abbott Sengstacke (1943-). Myrtle Sengstacke was active throughout her life in a number of philanthropic, social and charitable organizations, including the Chicago Defender Charities and its Black Creativity program, the Girl Scouts, the Parkway Community House, WTTW public television, the YMCA, and the Metropolitan Crusade of Mercy. She was also a member of social clubs for African-American women, including the Chicago Chapter of the Girl Friends and the Gay Northeasterners. She divorced John Sengstacke in 1974 and died in 1990 in Chicago.
Organizational Histories
In May, 1905, Robert S. Abbott launched a four-page, six-column folded sheet called the Chicago Defender. Abbott had had 300 copies printed at a total cost of $13.75, almost entirely on borrowed money. With only twenty-five cents in capital, Abbott bought notebooks and pencils, and he set up a card table—he had to borrow a chair—in a room he rented. For the Defender’s first five years, Abbott was reporter, editor, and newsboy, selling his paper door-to-door in barber shops, pool halls, churches, and clubs. Initial sales were slow, however, and when his printer demanded payment, Abbott was forced to give up his rented office, moving his headquarters into the room he rented from Henrietta Lee at 3159 State Street.
Abbott recruited volunteers to help him with reporting and writing, including lawyer Louis B. Anderson and businessman Julius Avendorph. In 1909 Abbott launched a campaign against vice in black neighborhoods, which helped increase sales. In 1910, Abbott was able to hire his first paid employee, J. Hockley Smiley, as managing editor in deed, if not in name. With the paper having been rejected by national distributors, Smiley proposed that railroad porters, waiters, and theater people carry bundles of the paper to cities across the country, often smuggling them into the South. Abbott hired Roscoe Conkling Simmons to promote the Defender throughout the country. He asked Ida B. Wells-Barnett to report on riots and lynchings.
By 1916, the Defender was being distributed in 71 cities and towns nationwide. The largest Defender readership outside Chicago was in southern states. In 1915, when the Defender adopted the anti-lynching slogan “If you must die, take at least one with you,” many Southern cities banned distribution of the paper. Abbott recognized an opportunity for southern African Americans to escape the brutal Jim Crow regime for greater prosperity in the North. On October 7, 1916, the Defender’s editorial page announced, “Farewell, Dixie Land,” urging “every black man for the sake of his wife and daughter [to] leave even at a financial sacrifice every spot in the south where his worth is not appreciated enough to give him the standing of a man and a citizen in the community.” In large part through the Defender’s efforts, somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 African Americans migrated to the North between 1916 and 1919. Chicago’s own black population nearly tripled, reaching 109,458 by 1920.
The 1919 Chicago Riot had produced friction between the Defender and its printer, which stopped production in the midst of the riot for fear of mobs outside the door. In November of that year Abbott solved the problem by purchasing, in cash, his own high-speed printing press and installing it at the Defender’s new headquarters on Indiana Avenue.
In 1921, the Defender added a children’s section called Defender Junior, with a fictional editor named Bud Billiken. Children could apply to be members of the Bud Billiken club, and editors took turns writing Billiken’s weekly column. Novelist Willard Motley served as the voice of Bud Billiken as a teenager. When Dave Kellum became editor of the section in 1927, he, along with Abbott and Lucius Harper, developed the idea for an annual Defender-sponsored parade. The first annual Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic took place in 1929. By mid-century the annual parade was one of the largest gatherings of African Americans in the United States, attracting national celebrities such as Duke Ellington.
By the early 1920s, the Defender had grown from a one-man operation into a business with 68 employees and branch offices across the United States as well as in London and Paris. In the 1920s, Abbott hired Nathan McGill as general counsel, later promoting him to vice-president. In the early 1930s, they had a falling-out. By 1934, Abbott had brought in his nephew, John H. H. Sengstacke, recently graduated from Hampton, as vice-president and treasurer. He also rehired a number of people McGill had fired during his tenure, including sports editor (Frank) Fay Young and gossip columnist Dan Burley. Perhaps the most important Defender hire of the 1930s was Metz T. P. Lochard, Ph.D., a graduate of the Sorbonne and former professor at Howard University. Lochard was the paper’s first foreign editor, and he became a close confidant of the aging Abbott.
Other prominent Defender staffers in the 1930s and 1940s included Jay Jackson, cartoonist; Dave Kellum, who had co-created the Annual “Bud Billiken” parade; Alfred E. “Al” Monroe, editor of the theater and sports pages; Lucius Harper, city editor; and Enoch Waters, war correspondent; as well as Charles Davis, Richard Durham, Ben Burns, Vernon Jarrett, and Louis E. Martin. During the 1940s, when the paper was edited by Metz “Doc” Lochard, the list of columnists was the most impressive assembled by any U.S. newspaper: they included Langston Hughes, Walter White, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Lochard directed the renowned September 1942 “Victory” edition of the Defender, with dozens of prominent writers discussing the role of African Americans in World War II.
Robert Abbott ceded control of the Defender to his nephew John H. Sengstacke in 1939, giving Sengstacke his controlling share of Abbott Publishing Company. When Abbott died in 1940, Sengstacke continued to run the paper during a ten-year legal dispute over Abbott’s estate. In 1948, Sengstacke helped win a major victory, convincing President Harry Truman to sign an Executive Order integrating the U. S. Armed Forces. In 1955, the Defender celebrated its 50th anniversary with a 100-page special issue.
On February 6, 1956, Sengstacke introduced the Chicago Daily Defender: four tabloid-style issues circulated Monday through Thursday, with a fifth weekend national edition. The Daily Defender focused primarily on local news, while the weekend edition maintained its national scope. Sengstacke served as editor of the daily and publisher of both the daily and the weekend Defender. By 1966, the Defender employed 150 staff members.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Defender maintained a staff of writers and editors that included Charles Tisdale, Vernon Jarrett, Consuelo Young, Lu Palmer, Doris Saunders, Ethel Payne, cartoonist Chester Commodore, and Fine Arts Editor Earl Calloway. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, the Defender supported nonviolent direct action and urged the passage of civil rights legislation. In spite of Sengstacke’s efforts—perhaps, ironically, because issues concerning African Americans had finally gained national prominence and recognition in the mainstream press—circulation of the Defender decreased steadily beginning in 1950. By 1977, circulation had declined to 34,000 daily and 38,000 for the weekend edition. John H. H. Sengstacke died in 1997, and ownership of the Defender passed to his heirs. In 2003, the Defender and its related publications were purchased by a new corporation, Real Times, Inc.
Bibliography
Botkin, Joshua. “Chicago Defender.” In The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Second edition. ed. Colin A. Palmer. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. 1205-1220.
Burns, Ben. Nitty Gritty: A White Editor in Black Journalism. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Garland, Phyl. “Journalism.” In The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Second edition. ed. Colin A. Palmer. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. 1205-1220.
Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke and John Herman Henry Sengstacke.” African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Johns, Robert L. “Robert Sengstacke Abbott.” Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 27 Ed. Ashyia N. Henderson. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 1-4.
Lochard, Metz T. P. “Phylon Profile, XII: Robert S. Abbott—‘Race Leader.’” Phylon 8.2 (1947). 124-132.
Ottley, Roi. The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert Abbott. Chicago: Harry Regnery Company, 1955.
Saunders, Doris. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” Dictionary of American Negro Biography. Ed. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.: 1982. 1-2.
Waters, Enoch P. American Diary: A Personal History of the Black Press. Chicago: Path Press, 1987.
Wilson, Clint C. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 9-10.
Wolseley, Roland Edgar. The Black Press, U.S.A. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1971.
National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
Founded in 1940 by John H. Sengstacke, the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, which today is known as the National Newspaper Publishers Association (the organization’s name was changed in 1956), began as an effort to promote the interests of the black press by “securing unity and action in all matters relative to the profession of journalism and the business of publishing.” They also sought to advance the cause of black journalists in particular, and African Americans in general, “by attempting to influence relevant and material legislation, participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office by publishing or distributing statements concerning matters of concern to the membership of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.”
Prior to its founding, John Sengstacke presented Robert S. Abbott, the editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, with the idea of creating a black counterpart to the all-white American Newspaper Publishers Association. Abbott believed the venture to be impossible. He insisted that the competition among African American newspapers had been so fierce that it would have been “impossible for them to meet in one room, let alone form an association.” When Robert S. Abbott died only months later, Sengstacke went ahead with his plans and organized the NNPA, ushering in a new era in black publishing. In 1940, representatives from about 20 African American-owned newspapers from all parts of the United States (except the west coast) gathered at the NNPA’s first meeting in Chicago. Sengstacke was elected as the first president. According to one source, “the organization was initially met with cool responses from notable black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier; however, it did receive support and participation from the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the Kansas City Call. Others outside the publishing industry in government and active in civil rights also attended the founding session of the NNPA.”
By 1944, the NNPA’s accomplishments included the official accreditation of African American correspondents to the White House conferences and in war coverage, and the establishment of a Washington news bureau serving black newspapers around the U.S. That same year, the NNPA established a committee demanding that President Franklin D. Roosevelt end segregation in the armed forces. This campaign gave rise to a 1948 Truman commission, on which Sengstacke served, which conceived the guidelines for ending segregation in the military.
NNPA annual conventions also served as an effective tool to focus attention on advertising, editorial, and newsgathering problems faced by the black media. Since its early years, the NNPA has grown and become increasingly influential – a phenomenon marked in part by its membership of over 200 African American newspapers in 2000.
Bibliography
“Articles of Incorporation of Associated Newspaper Publishers of America.” November 15, 1974.
Black Press Information Handbook, 1974-75. Washington, DC: National Newspaper Publishers Association, 1974.
Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. African American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Pride, Armistead S. and Clint C. Wilson. A History of the Black Press. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997.
“Sengstacke, a legend, dies after illness at 84.” Michigan Chronicle 4 June 1997, 1A.
Wolseley, Roland E. The Black Press, U.S.A. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990.
Sengstacke Enterprises (an Illinois corporation) was founded by John Sengstacke in November, 1936, at the suggestion of Robert Abbott. Throughout the corporation’s existence, it has served as a holding company for Abbott-Sengstacke family ventures, mostly newspapers. About the time Sengstacke Enterprises was founded, Sengstacke played a role in the beginnings of the Michigan Chronicle, which later became the first subsidiary of Sengstacke Enterprises. As the family empire grew, several newspapers and their publishing companies were brought under the fold of Sengstacke Enterprises. The Chicago Defender, formerly owned and run by the Robert Abbott Publishing Company, became a subsidiary of Sengstacke Enterprises. In 1951, the Memphis-based Tri-State Defender was founded and became a subsidiary. In 1966, through a series of transactions, Sengstacke Enterprises acquired the Pittsburgh Courier and the Florida (Miami) Courier. The Pittsburgh Courier’s name was officially changed to the New Pittsburgh Courier that same year. Sengstacke Enterprises maintained control over the finances and operations of its newspapers and subsidiaries, but each newspaper had its own management responsible for day-to-day operations and finances.
Several other corporations were subsidiaries of Sengstacke Enterprises. The trajectory of John Sengstacke’s non-newspaper related corporations is somewhat difficult to disentangle, particularly because he frequently reorganized the companies’ holdings. Between its founding in 1959 and its dissolution in the 1990s, Vigene Products, a wholesale drug company started by Sengstacke, was treated as a subsidiary of Sengstacke Enterprises, as well as a personal financial venture. The Tiki Room, a restaurant established by John Sengstacke in Chicago, was briefly a subsidiary of Sengstacke Enterprises. John Sengstacke served as Chairman of Sengstacke Enterprises and maintained a major role in the company until his death in 1997.
Scope and Content:
I. Robert S. Abbott Super Series, Predominant dates, 1880-1940; Inclusive dates, 1847-1983
The Robert S. Abbott Super Series has been arranged in eight separate series: Biography, Personal Financial, Legal and Family documents; Manuscripts; Correspondence; the Chicago Defender; the Booker T. Washington Project; Serials; Clippings; and Memorabilia. Related papers at the Harsh Research Collection include the McGill Family Papers (1895-1960), the David Kellum Papers (1920-1981), and the Marjorie Stewart Joyner Papers (1890-1994). See also Box 41 of the Illinois Writers Project/”Negro in Illinois” Papers (1936-1942), which includes an extensive study on Chicago’s black journalism.
Series 1: Biography, Personal Financial, Legal and Family Documents, 1847-1940
This series contains information pertaining to the birth, death, lineage, and personal financial and legal files of Robert Abbott. The biography file contains manuscripts written about Robert Abbott and his founding of the Chicago Defender as well as a file of clippings on the death of Abbott in 1940. Of note in this series are family records that trace the lineage of the Abbott-Sengstacke family back to the mid-nineteenth century. The personal financial files largely deal with Abbott’s personal real estate holdings and income tax statements. Included in the legal files are records of Robert Abbott’s 1933 divorce from his first wife, Helen Morrison.
Series 2: Manuscripts, 1922-1938
The manuscripts have been arranged chronologically and consist of several speeches given by Abbott as well as articles written by Abbott for the Chicago Defender. Of note is a manuscript recalling the recommendations of the Chicago Race Commission formed after the 1919 Chicago Riots. Abbott was a member of the Commission.
Series 3: Correspondence, 1888-1940
This series consists primarily of correspondence to Robert Abbott and includes letters written to Abbott from political figures, family members, Chicago Defender readers, local Chicago and national organizations. Notable correspondents include Earl B. Dickerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Hampton University, Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly, Nathan K. McGill, the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Republican National Committee, John D. Rockefeller, Julius Rosenwald, and John Sengstacke. The 1932-1934 correspondence between Robert Abbott and John Sengstacke largely pertains to Sengstacke’s schooling at Hampton and preparation for his career at the Defender.
Series 4: Chicago Defender, 1908-1964
This series contains files of the Chicago Defender arranged chronologically during the years prior to Abbott’s death in 1940, with the exception of a Defender stock shares book which spans the years from the 1920s to 1964. The files contain information pertaining to Abbott’s purchase of the first Defender building at 35th Street and Indiana Avenue, early Defender promotional pamphlets, Abbott’s appointment of John Sengstacke as Defender office manager in 1934, internal Defender correspondence between Robert Abbott and Nathan K. McGill (Vice President and General Counsel of the Defender), annual meeting minutes of the stockholders of the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company, day-to-day financial transactions, and several employee salary listings from the 1930s.
Series 5: The Booker T. Washington Project, 1915-1917
Upon the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915, Robert Abbott and Robert White commissioned a book project to celebrate the life and achievements of Washington. Photographs and excerpts on the importance of BTW from prominent men and women—senators, congressmen, University presidents, and others were solicited for the project. Most of the contributors were white and most were male, with Jane Addams as one notable exception. Notable contributors also include: Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Gompers, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. This series also contains a large clipping file on the death of Booker T. Washington. Photographs which accompanied the contributor’s submissions are being processed within the Robert Abbott photographic series and will be available at a later date.
Series 6: Serials, 1915-1937
Most of the serials in this series are Chicago-based, including the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Daily News, an issue of the Chicago World, an issue of the Chicago Whip, the Chicago Tribune, and an issue of the Defender Junior. Also of note are four issues of Abbott’s Monthly, a magazine that Abbott began publishing through the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company in December 1931, and which ran through September 1933.
Series 7: Clippings, 1919-1936
This series contains clippings collected by Robert Abbott on himself and on the Chicago Defender, Abbott’s appointment to the Chicago Race Relations Commission, and a number of other topics not directly related to Abbott and the Defender. Clippings have been arranged alphabetically by subject.
Series 8: Memorabilia, 1899-1938
Robert Abbott’s memorabilia largely consists of business and holiday cards, invitations, postcards, brochures and programs. There are some keepsakes from Abbott’s travels to Paris and Germany in the 1920s as well as a copy of the program of Abbott’s graduation from Kent College of Law in 1899.
II. John H. Sengstacke Super Series, Predominant Dates, 1935-1997; Inclusive dates, 1927-1997
The John H. Sengstacke Super Series has been arranged in eighteen separate series: Biography and Official Documents; Manuscripts; Correspondence; Family Records; Personal Financial; Legal; Subject Files; Sengstacke Enterprises; The Chicago Defender; Other Sengstacke Newspapers; Chicago Defender Charities; Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. (API); National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA); Organization Files; Serials; Audiovisual; Clippings; and Memorabilia. Researchers should note that though the series have been arranged according to these categories, there were significant overlaps between family and business records, and thus material that is family-related has been arranged in the Defender series if it is predominantly business-oriented.
Related papers at the Harsh Research Collection can be consulted for further information on the following subjects: on Provident Hospital, see the Leonidas Berry Papers (1930-1995), Ulysses Grant Dailey Papers (1920-1960), James Richardson Papers (1892-1994) and the Myrtis Minor Papers (1948-1999); on the Defender, see the Barbara E. Allen Papers (2004-2005), the Ben Burns Papers (1939-1999), the Charles A. Davis Papers (1950-1997), the Richard Durham Papers (1944-1984), the David Kellum Papers (1920-1981), the Illinois Writers Project/”Negro in Illinois” Papers, the Marjorie Stewart Joyner Papers (1890-1994), the McGill Family Papers (1895-1960), and the Doris E. Saunders Papers (1884-1998).
Series 1. Biography and Official Documents, 1937-1997
The biographical portion includes family genealogical information collected by Sengstacke and material detailing his life, including manuscripts authored by Sengstacke and by A.S. (Doc) Young in the 1980s. This series also includes official documentation of the life of John Sengstacke, Jr., who changed his name to Jon Subor in 1967, and died in 1976. Additional family biographical materials can also be found in family records series of this super series, and in the official documents series of the Myrtle Sengstacke super series.
Series 2. Manuscripts, 1932-1997
The manuscript series consists predominantly of material written by John Sengstacke, dating from a piece entitled “How I Depend on Others” (1932) to speeches in the early 1990s. Topics include local and national politics, advertising and black business, black journalism, the “Double V” campaign, and the civil rights movement. Any manuscript by Sengstacke is in this series, including those written on behalf of the Defender, NNPA, or personal statements. In addition to material by Sengstacke, this series also includes manuscripts by other authors which were retained by him. Of particular note are two drafts of Roi Ottley’s The Lonely Warrior (1955), as well as correspondence and material related to its writing and publication.
Series 3. Correspondence, 1932-1997
This series includes John Sengstacke’s personal correspondence and thus was arranged separately from correspondence written in his capacity as editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, as chairman of Sengstacke Enterprises, or through NNPA and API. The series includes mostly family letters, correspondence with his distant relatives of the Bödeker family in Germany, and correspondence with friends and colleagues. Also included in this series is correspondence written by or to other family members. Of particular note are letters to Rebecca Sengstacke from administrators at Chaflin University and the Hampton Institute in the 1940s regarding documents which belonged to Robert Abbott in the 1880s. The letters and the originals of the documents are arranged at the end of the correspondence series.
Series 4. Family Records, 1935-1995
The family records series is comprised mostly of material on John H. Sengstacke, III (or John, Jr.) and specifically letters and material related to his death in 1976. Additionally, this series includes medical records of John Sengstacke himself and other family members.
Series 5. Personal Financial, 1935-1997
The personal financial series includes Sengstacke’s real estate holdings in Chicago, Michigan, and Savannah, GA; banking records; income tax returns for John Sengstacke and Ethel Sengstacke; finances for his Yellow Lake, Michigan property; insurance policies; and information on his private businesses, including the Tiki Room and Vigene Products.
Series 6. Legal, 1937-1995
The legal series includes lawsuits by and against Sengstacke, and legal material related to family members. Legal disputes involving the Defender or other newspapers are arranged under those series. The dispute over the Robert Abbott estate, which centered on control of the Chicago Defender, has been arranged under the Defender series.
Series 7. Subject Files, 1942-1987
This wide-ranging series includes material kept by Sengstacke on individuals, events of interest--including events in honor of Robert S. Abbott—and travel to Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya. Subject files kept on Defender-related topics are arranged in the Chicago Defender series.
Series 8. Sengstacke Enterprises, 1947-1997
This series contains records regarding the operations and corporate structure of Sengstacke Enterprises. These papers are arranged by subject and include: the history of Sengstacke Enterprises, employee relations, finances, legal suits brought against Sengstacke Enterprises, operations, and real estate holdings. The initiative to automate Sengstacke Enterprises and its subsidiaries in the early 1980s is documented under operations. The files of Sengstacke Enterprises’ subsidiary holdings are arranged in separate series—in the Chicago Defender series, the Other Newspapers series, and the Personal Financial series.
Series 9. Chicago Defender, 1927-1997
This series chronicles the Chicago Defender under the leadership of John Sengstacke, largely beginning in 1940, though the earliest files from the lengthy litigation over the estate of Robert Abbott date back to 1927. This dispute eventually resulted in John Sengstacke gaining full control of the ownership of the Chicago Defender and other businesses previously owned by Abbott. This material was collected by John Sengstacke from both Abbott’s papers and his own, and has been arranged chronologically.
Advertising, circulation, employee relations, financial, legal, and operations files from the Defender have all been arranged chronologically.
The extensive files on armed forces-race relations chronicle John Sengstacke’s role during World War II and his efforts to achieve desegregation in the armed forces in the years which followed. One set of materials includes correspondence, reports and manuscripts between John Sengstacke and newspaper correspondents at the Defender and in the field, the Office of War Information, the War Department, and various military officials. Another set of materials chronicles John Sengstacke’s trip aboard the U.S.S. Philippine Sea in 1950. The final set of materials contains detailed minutes of the National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs held in 1948 and of the meetings of the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services in 1949.
The voluminous Defender correspondence files represent approximately one-third of the Defender series and consist of letters written to John Sengstacke in his official capacity as editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, as well as correspondence to other Defender employees.This material has been arranged alphabetically by correspondent. These files include correspondence from local Chicago and national political figures, including United States presidents and the White House officials, African American and white newspaper editors and publishers, churches, civil rights and political organizations and schools and universities. Also represented are letters to the editor, written by members of the public to John Sengstacke, and arranged alphabetically by name. Additional internal Defender correspondence, memos and reports can be found in the operations files.
Employee relations includes material on and by a number of prominent journalists and staff members, including David W. Kellum, Al Monroe, David H. Orro, and Enoch P. Waters, as well as material on employee organizing attempts, including a 1941 association of editorial workers. Manuscripts from the Defender have been arranged into four sections: Defender manuscripts, or typescripts of articles written for the Defender by its columnists and staff; manuscripts submissions sent in by members of the public; cartoon submissions, and other manuscripts, including a previously unknown draft chapter on the history of the Chicago Defender written by Arna Bontemps for the Illinois Writers Project/“Negro in Illinois” study in 1942.
Material by Louis Martin, a former Defender editor, and later an aide in several White House administrations, was received from Robert Sengstacke as a separate file. This separate arrangement has been retained, though now arranged chronologically. Material on the operation of the Defender follows this series. An important note on the operations series is that significant internal correspondence by Defender employees such as Major Robinson, Al Monroe, Lucius Harper, and Metz Lochard is arranged alongside operations material. The series has been arranged chronologically to better contextualize significant points in the paper’s history with its everyday operations. The press and publicity files contain both press releases sent to the Defender and Defender publicity publications.
The subject files, collected by John Sengstacke and other staff members, document a wide range of interests, including political materials from various local and national elections, files from the Defender’s 50th, 75th and 90th anniversaries, the beginning and first anniversary of the Chicago Daily Defender, files on political figures, and market studies conducted by the Defender from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Also of note in this series is a clippings and photographic scrapbook from the 50th anniversary of the Defender and original copies of the World War II “Victory” edition of the Defender from September 16, 1942.
Series 10. Other Newspapers, 1936-1997
This series contains records of the other major newspaper subsidiaries and smaller corporate ventures of Sengstacke Enterprises. The bulk of this series contains the records of the Michigan Chronicle, the New Pittsburgh Courier, and the Tri-State Defender. For the most part, each newspaper is largely arranged into several categories: correspondence, employee relations, financial, legal and operations, which pertain to the day-to-day management of the newspaper. The files of the New Pittsburgh Courier include thorough documentation of the meeting minutes of the Board of Directors in the 1960s as well as documentation of the purchase of the Pittsburgh Courier in 1966 and the legal cases which ensued. Also of note are 23 original cartoons by Ollie Harrington, long-time cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier.
Series 11. Chicago Defender Charities, 1938-1997
This series has been arranged into five sections and then chronologically ordered within each section. The first section contains correspondence, committee meeting minutes and financial files on the Bud Billiken Parade (largely from the 1980s). The second section contains general correspondence on the operations of Chicago Defender Charities and of its long-time director, Marjorie Stewart Joyner. The third section contains files on “Black Creativity,” an annual event held in conjunction with the Museum of Science & Industry to celebrate the achievements of African Americans. The fourth section, “Black Esthetics,” was an annual festival celebrating African American music, art and drama. In its early years, “Black Esthetics” was primarily a Chicago Defender initiative under the direction of its Fine Arts Editor, Earl Calloway, but later was handled almost exclusively by the Chicago Defender Charities. The final section contains the 1984-1985 preliminary application proposal for the Robert S. Abbott House, a low and moderate-income housing complex for the elderly, which was never built.
Series 12. Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. (API), 1960-1997
This series contains the general files, annual meeting minutes of the board of directors and stockholders, and financial files of the Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. (API). API was a black national advertising conglomerate led by John Sengstacke and several other notable black newspaper publishers and advertisers. These files have been arranged chronologically and consist mainly of correspondence and reports on the need for black advertising and marketing in the black press. Also of note are a series of readership analysis surveys conducted by API among black newspaper readers in fourteen major U.S. cities, including Chicago, IL. There is also significant correspondence between API and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), as many of the black editors and publishers involved in API were also members of NNPA.
Series 13. National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), 1941-2002
These files have been arranged into several categories: board of directors meeting minutes, by-laws, correspondence, annual conventions, committee files, mid-winter workshops, financial and organizational, A-Z files, serials, the records of Sherman Briscoe (executive director of NNPA from 1970-1979), and memorabilia. Though there is a 1941 letter from John Sengstacke to the NNPA and two programs from NNPA annual conventions in 1946 and 1947, the bulk of this group of records covers the period from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The files include information on officer elections, convention schedules and objectives and goals for the black press within a given year. Of note in the “A-Z” NNPA files are several speeches given by John Sengstacke at NNPA conventions. In November 1969, eight black newspaper editors and publishers from NNPA went on a ten day tour of Israel, sponsored by the Urban Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Correspondence, schedules, manuscripts and memorabilia from that trip can also be found in the A-Z files.
Series 14. Organization Files, 1943-1996
The organization series includes material on all organizational affiliations of Sengstacke. Files on each organization range in size from one folder to several boxes. Some of the significant organization collections include the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA), the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), the Hampton Alumni Association, the Original Forty Club of Chicago, and the Royal Coterie of Snakes. Especially significant are the files on Provident Hospital (1965-1994). Sengstacke was a member of the Board of Trustees of this African-American-owned hospital from 1973-87. The series includes trustee board minutes, committee minutes, financial documents, publicity material and building fund material from this period. These Provident Hospital documents are some of the few remaining management records of the hospital, as nearly all official records were lost between the end of private ownership and its reopening under the Cook County hospital system.
Series 15. Serials, 1890-1996
This series contains issues of magazines and newspapers collected and preserved by John Sengstacke in his personal papers. These include African American-oriented publications, publications related to the newspaper and magazine industry, periodicals collected on his travels abroad, and issues of serials which he considered to be of an important historical nature. Of particular note is an 1890 edition of the Woodville Times, the Savannah newspaper edited by John Sengstacke’s father.
Series 16. A/V, 1934-1997
This series includes 108 35mm, 16mm, and Super 8mm films (as well as large format (¾-inch) videocassettes and 8mm magnetic audiotapes) that span Sengstacke’s professional and personal life from 1934-1982. From the earliest known footage of the Chicago Defender Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic to Sengstacke’s trips to Israel, China, and Russia as a member of the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the professional films offer firsthand images of the breadth of Sengstacke’s career. At the same time, the personal films feature home movies and travelogues of the Sengstacke family in Michigan, Hawaii, England, Israel, and Mexico. Eighty-one of these items have been transferred to DVD to make them readily accessible to researchers. These materials, mainly home movies, are organized primarily according to categorization of content as well as researcher access. They are categorized according to films whose contents were identified prior to accession by the Sengstacke family, those with unidentified content, and other items that comprise part of the collection but are unavailable to researchers either due to copyright restrictions or the format of the items. Whenever possible, means of accessing other editions of these items at other institutions and archives has been noted.
In addition, the moving image materials have been dated first according to dates on the items themselves (such as that written on film leaders or containers) and then by Kodak edge codes that indicate when the film was either manufactured or processed. In the case of the 16mm films, the edge codes indicate the date of manufacture, and therefore the earliest that these films could have been shot. In the case of the Super 8mm films, the edge codes state the month and year the film was processed and specify the latest date they could have been shot. In addition to the thematic organization of the identified films then, the items have also been grouped according to these dates.
Identified Films, 1947-1972
The collection includes 64 films with content identified prior to accession by the Sengstacke family. These have been divided according to those which contain footage of John Sengstacke’s professional activities as editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender and those which pertain to his personal life, including vacation films and home movies of the family’s vacation homes in South Haven, Michigan and Yellow Lake, Michigan. The division is not always as strict though, as in the case of the 16mm films, “Lewis at the Lake” [#48], which includes footage of the 1957 Chicago Defender company picnic as well as of Lewis Sengstacke as a child, and “South Haven Uncle Lewis” [45], which consists of film of South Haven as well as of the Bud Billiken Parade from the late 1940s. Since both principally feature footage of the Sengstacke family, they have been grouped with the personal films but their relevance to the professional films has been noted in the container list.
The professional films include the earliest known extant footage of the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, the largest African American parade in the United States. Both “South Haven Uncle Lewis” [45] and “Bud Billiken 1948, Derby 1949” [1] include footage from the late 1940s, while there is newsreel footage of the twenty-fifth parade in “Bud Billiken Parade Picnic” [2]. The moving image material also features All-American Newsreel footage of Sengstacke receiving an award from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for his work in African-American journalism [#9] as well as films of the Chicago Defender’s annual picnic [11, 12].
In addition, the professional series features several films of Sengstacke’s international travels as a representative of the American press. There is footage of Sengstacke’s trips to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico while on the board of directors of the Virgin Islands corporation from 1952-1957 [3-6] and film of Princess Margaret’s official welcome of the West Indies Federation into the Commonwealth of Nations in 1958 [7, 8]. Sengstacke also took two “newsman’s holidays” courtesy of Trans World Airlines in 1967 and 1969, traveling first to East Africa via Athens, Greece and Rome, Italy in 1967 [13-17] and then to Hong Kong in 1969 [18, 19] to inaugurate TWA’s new lines of service.
Sengstacke shot almost 350 feet of 16mm film while on a trip to Israel in 1969 as a representative of the National Newspaper Publishers Association [20-26]. In October 1972, Sengstacke toured China with the American Society of Newspaper Editors and shot several Super 8mm films of his experiences [28-32]. This and other footage were then edited into a newsreel hosted by Sengstacke entitled “A Black Man’s View of China” [27]. In addition to the six identified films from China, four of the unidentified films were shot during the same time period and feature similar subject matter [71-74] and seem likely to be from this trip. Finally, several films document Sengstacke’s trip to the Soviet Union in October 1973 with eight other Black newspaper publishers as guests of the Union of Soviet Journalists. In addition to Sengstacke’s own Super 8mm films [33-38], a professional 35mm film of their trip, “American Journalists in the Soviet Union” [39, 40] was produced in English.
Sengstacke’s personal films include several 16mm home movies of the family’s vacation homes in South Haven and Yellow Lake from the late 1940s to late 1950s [42-48] as well as travelogues of trips to Hawaii in the 1960s [49, 50]; Israel, England, and Mexico in 1970 [51-53]; Bangor, Maine [54, 55], Las Vegas [56], and Nice, France [57]. This group also features what appear to be several Super 8mm “film exercises” made in 1969 [59-63] as well as a 16mm film titled “Girl Build Up Freddie” [64].
Unidentified Films, 1963-1972
There are eighteen unidentified films in the collection, two 16mm, fifteen Super 8mm, and one 35mm film, of which seventeen are available to researchers. Based on their content and dates, four appear to be from Sengstacke’s trip to China in 1972 [71-74]. However, as the unidentified films have no titles, our descriptions are preliminary and researchers are invited to contribute any information they may have as to their contents.
Other Items, 1934-1982
The collection also houses seventeen 16mm films that were commercially produced, four Betacam videocassettes of the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic in 1978 and 1982, two reels of undeveloped Super 8mm film, and three reels of 8mm magnetic audio tape that are not available for researcher access. The commercially produced films include several cartoon shorts distributed by Castle Films, four reels of the film Missing Pages, produced by Fisk University Department of Art, and a film on the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Whenever possible, alternative means of accessing these items has been noted in the container list.
The end of this series contains materials sent to John Sengstacke by music and videotape publishers hoping to gain publicity in the Defender and other Sengstacke newspapers. Also in this series are videotapes and audio cassette tapes from the memorial service for John Sengstacke held at Church of the Good Shepherd in Chicago, Illinois on June 7, 1997.
Bibliography for Moving Image Items
“8 Editors, Publishers Off to Israel,” Chicago Defender, November 17, 1969, p. 9.
“8 Publishers on tour; Blacks view new Russia,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1973, p. 3.
“Defender Chief Finds ‘Paradise’ in Islands,” Chicago Defender, March 14, 1953, p. 1-2.
“Defender’s Publisher Set for African Trip,” Chicago Defender, September 21, 1967, p. 3.
Guilmant, Pierre, “Publisher on Special Plane Trip,” Chicago Defender, August 30, 1969, p. 1.
“Princess Hails New W. Indies Nation,” Chicago Defender, April 23, 1958, p. 3.
“Sengstacke talks to medics in China,” Chicago Defender, October 17, 1972, p. 2.
“Sengstacke to report on China,” Chicago Defender, October 9, 1972, p. 4.
“Truman Puts Sengstacke in VI Post,” Chicago Defender, July 5, 1952, p. 1-2.
“Virgin Isles Readies for Carnival Fete,” Chicago Defender, April 11, 1953, p. 15.
Series 17. Clippings
This series includes clippings of articles about the Chicago Defender and the Abbott-Sengstacke family. Also included are selected whole pages of the Chicago Defender and the Tri-State Defender. Both sets of newspaper clippings are arranged chronologically.
Series 18. Memorabilia
The memorabilia series includes plaques, awards, certificates, commemorative and art objects, greeting cards and invitations, as well as scrapbooks and story boards from the 1950s.
III. Myrtle Sengstacke Super Series, Predominant Dates, 1939-1990; inclusive dates, 1914-1990
The Myrtle Sengstacke Super Series includes material that documents Myrtle Sengstacke’s political and social interests, her activity in Chicago social life, and her personal and family life. The collection did not have any arrangement when it was first processed and has been rearranged and divided into the following series: Correspondence, Biography/Family Records/Official Documents, Manuscripts, Personal Financial, Programs, Organizational Files, Clippings, Serials, Memorabilia and Audiovisual, and Yearbooks. Related papers at the Harsh Research Collection include the Venona Johnson Papers, 1966-1995, which include material on the Chicago Chapter of the Girlfriends, of which Myrtle Sengstacke was a member. See also the archives of the Howalton School (1941-1995), which was attended by Lewis and Robert Sengstacke.
Series 1. Correspondence, 1939-1990
All correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, except in cases when the correspondent’s name was not legible, in which case it was filed either as “Author unknown” or by an approximation of the name. Some correspondence from John Sengstacke was originally with material on their divorce in 1974. This series includes Myrtle Sengstacke’s correspondence with her family, organizational and political contacts, and friends. The bulk of the material spans the 1950s to the 1970s. In the 1940s, she had ongoing correspondence with Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1958, she hosted the “Little Rock Nine” students in Chicago, where they were presented with the Robert S. Abbott memorial award for their stand against segregation. Letters from the students have been filed under correspondence and kept with newspaper clippings documenting their visit.
Series 2. Biography, Family Records, and Official Documents, 1914-1990
This series includes the official and family records kept by Myrtle Sengstacke, including material on her wedding, the birth and education of her sons, including records from the Manumit School in Bristol, Pennsylvania, the death of John Sengstacke, Jr., and her divorce from John Sengstacke in 1974. All of the material from the divorce, including items sent to and from John Sengstacke, has been arranged together under this series. Other official and family records related to the family can also be found in the John Sengstacke series. Cards sent to Myrtle Sengstacke after the death of John, Jr. have been arranged with memorabilia.
Series 3. Manuscripts, Personal Financial, and Programs, 1944-1987
Most of the manuscripts are fragments, either undated or written in the 1970s, though there is one piece written about the Midwestern Regional Conference of Jack and Jill of America Teen-Agers. Programs include the launching of the S.S. Robert S. Abbott in April 1944, paid for by war bonds purchased by African-Americans, supported by the Chicago Defender, and sponsored by Myrtle Sengstacke.
Series 4. Organizational Files, 1959-1977
This series documents Myrtle Sengstacke’s significant involvement and fundraising efforts for the Girl Scouts of America, the YMCA, the United Negro College Fund, and in the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission in the late 1960s. She was also a member of the Gay Northeasterners and the Chicago Chapter of the Girl Friends.
Series 5. Clippings, 1939-1980
The clippings collection is organized by subject matter. Subjects include Myrtle Sengstacke herself, her family, the Chicago Defender, and local and national politics.
Series 6. Serials, 1944-1963
This series includes issues of the Defender depicting national events and one serial of note, the “We Also Serve” publication highlighting the contributions of African Americans to WWII, which features Myrtle Sengstacke christening the S.S. Robert S. Abbott.
Series 7. Memorabilia, 1945-1985
Memorabilia includes material from inaugurations, travel, invitations, as well as Christmas and congratulatory cards.
Series 8. Yearbooks, 1928-1930
This series includes the yearbooks of Myrtle and Tom Picou during her junior high school years.
Approximately 4,000 photographs from the papers of Robert Abbott, John Sengstacke, and Myrtle Sengstacke are also in this collection. These include remarkable documentation of more than 100 years of the history of the Abbott-Sengstacke family, images of Chicago Defender activities from the World War I era through the 1990s, as well as photographs taken in the wide array of other organizational events in which members of the Abbott-Sengstacke family participated. These photographs are currently being processed and will be available for researchers at a later date.
Container ListSuper Series 1:
Robert S. Abbott, Predominant dates, 1862 – 1940; Inclusive dates, 1847-1964
Continue to the John H. Sengstacke Super Series or go back to the top.